


Chains of our own Forging

by Sanguinifex (Eros_Scribens)



Series: Zevwarden Week 2016 [5]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Clothed Sex, Come Marking, Comeplay, Coming In Pants, Exhibitionism, Facials, Frottage, Humiliation, M/M, Piercings, Wall Sex, ZevWarden Week, Zevwarden Week 2016, fuck the chantry, of a sort, zevran's earring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-06
Updated: 2016-08-06
Packaged: 2018-07-29 16:45:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7692034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eros_Scribens/pseuds/Sanguinifex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Crow and a Circle mage are now free men, and must figure out the definition of love.</p><p>For ZevWarden Week 2016, Day 5: Zevran's Earring.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chains of our own Forging

**Author's Note:**

> Formerly-Dalish-but-stolen-by-Templars Surana, in this timeline; if you don't know that, there's a couple lines here that won't make sense.

Returning to Arl Eamon’s Denerim estate covered in blood was starting to become an alarming habit. Really, why had the Crows decided to strike now? They hadn’t even told anyone they were going that way. Alim was deciding whom to delegate for asking Eamon if he’d hired any new servants lately.

Zevran, not surprisingly, had locked himself in their room as soon as Alim had finished changing, and probably was crying. Alim decided to wander down to the library and read something.

He was scribbling heated corrections in an alarmingly inaccurate pamphlet called “100 Salutary and Effective Herbs for Home Use” when someone tapped his shoulder. It was Zevran, looking a bit shaky but composed.

“Here. It seems an appropriate moment to give you this.” Zevran took his hand and placed a small object in it.

“Is that an earring?”

“A trophy, really. I obtained it on my very first job for the Crows. A Rivaini merchant prince was wearing a single jeweled earring when I killed him. In fact, that was about all he was wearing. I thought it was beautiful, and I took it to mark the occasion. I have kept it since...and I’d like you to have it.”

“But why give it to me?”

“Well, you have just helped me rid myself of a little problem. It’s really the least I could give you in return.”

“You don’t need to _pay_ me for that! We are friends! Besides, Taliesen wanted to kill me, too.”

“It is not _payment_. It is just...I want you to have it. But if you do not want it…”

“I just want to know what this is about, first.”

“It just has meant a lot to me, what you have done. Please, take it.”

“Um...all right. If you’re sure.”

 

Alim stared at the earring in his hand. He had not been surprised that Zevran kept such a thing, that was not it. No, in the Tower nearly all mages kept little trinkets, things brought by traveling merchants or smuggled in or left by rare visitors or picked from Templars’ pockets, just to have something of their own, when even their clothes did not really belong to them. He’d once had an Orlesian coin, a crudely-carved animal figure he pretended was a halla, and an empty tiny glass perfume bottle. Of course, he’d lost them at Ostagar; left his things at Duncan’s tent, before the Joining, and the next time he was there, he couldn’t find them under the snow and the wreckage.

No, the problem was how Zevran had felt he was obligated to give it to him. They’d been over this! Zevran was not required to do anything, not sleep with him or give him things or bring in money, just to stay with them until they had some kind of upper hand over this Blight, and not kill him or Alistair. Did he worry he would be sent away, now that the Crows gone, if the Landsmeet succeeded? Did he think that little of himself? That he was not really a friend, or a frighteningly competent herbalist and alchemist that any apothecary would be honored to do research with, or, for that matter, the most sexually inventive person Alim had ever slept with? That he had to apologize for having to deal with a past he hadn’t even chosen?

Perhaps he should give Zevran something back, to show him that he was important. He’d seen mages do that, sometimes. A couple of the times Anders had run away, he’d given that little embroidered pillow he had to Karl Thekla, for safekeeping. Alim knew, because he’d seen it in Enchanter Thekla’s office when he’d gone in for help with papers or later his culminating project sometimes. But what to give? He didn’t have anything he’d kept long enough, or that Zevran hadn’t been there for.

It was a real pity that he had lost his things at Ostagar. That perfume bottle had been great.

 

Alim was not particularly surprised when Zevran didn’t want sex that night. He knew Zevran and Taliesen had had the kind of history that made one killing the other particularly emotionally painful. But when he claimed he was “too tired” the next night, after they had done nothing but wander around the house all day, Alim started to worry. When he started a conversation about the possible benefits of adding cinnamon oil to their lubricating tincture the next morning, after breakfast, and Zevran immediately changed the subject, he knew something was up.

“Are you okay?” he asked, when he’d got Zevran alone. “Did one of the Crows drug or poison you the other day? Are you injured? You seem...not like you.”

“I’m not sure I want to talk about this. I really do not know what to say. I am not slowly dying of Crow poisons, if that will put you at ease.”

“I’m still worried about you. I want to know what’s changed.”

“Agh...very well. An assassin must learn to forget about sentiment. It is dangerous. You take your pleasures where you can, when life is good. To expect anything more would be reckless. I thought it was the same between us, something to enjoy, a pleasant diversion, and little more. And yet…”

“Are you saying you’re in love with me? Like, romance novels sort of love?”

“I don’t know! How would you know such a thing? I grew up amongst those who sold the...illusion of love, and then I was trained to make my heart cold in favor of the kill. Everything I have been taught says what I feel is wrong. Yet, I cannot help it. Since…”

“Since when?”

“Since you asked me into your tent. Well, really, since you walked into my suicide attempt of a ‘trap’ and brought me out alive, I was intrigued then, but when you asked me into your tent and I thought I knew at last why you had spared me, and then you panicked that you were forcing me and told me I was under no obligation to sleep with you. You held my life debt, but did not want to even think about using it, for sex or anything else. No one I had ever known would do that. I was confused. I have been confused ever since. Do you understand me at all?”

“I don’t know if that’s love. Mages aren’t supposed to love either. If it happens, you get transferred, usually somewhere pretty awful, from what I heard. If children come of it, they are taken away and raised by the Chantry. There are friends, and there are people you fuck, and sometimes the two overlap. That’s all I really know. There aren’t ever romance novels about mages, except for cruel, rapacious magisters. They don’t get to love.”

“All I need to know is if there might be some future for us, some possibility of...I do not know what.”

“I hope so. I hope there is a future at all. I’m not sure I know what love is, but I can try. I don’t want to be away from you. I want to talk to you, I want to let you know everything about me--well, almost everything,” he amended hastily, “I want to hold you, I want to make you laugh, I want to make you come screaming loud enough to wake people in Orlais. And for you to make me scream like that too, obviously. And I want that to keep happening for a very long time.” Between twenty and thirty years was all he had, he knew, but that still seemed very long, on this end of it. He’d tell Zevran about that part later. “Is that what you want?”

“Something like that, I think.” Zevran paused. “The earring--do you still want it? You seemed almost hurt, when I gave it to you.”

“I did not understand why you were giving it to me. I do, now. I wish I had something like that to give you. I had things like that once, but the Blight took them.”

“Darkspawn steal jewelry?”

“Not jewelry. Cherished trinkets. Things that how you got them have meaning. Like Alistair has Duncan’s shield, may it protect his sadly unavailable ass. The only thing I’ve got like that anymore is the marks on my face, and that’s my face, so it’s not a thing. I can’t give you it.”

“Do not be so sure of that. I wager I could find a use for your face.”

“...I brought that upon myself, didn’t I.”

“You could bring something else upon yourself, no?”

“There’s the Zevran I know.”

 

Still laughing, Alim and Zevran elfhandled each other into the nearest empty room. Not even stopping to properly lock the door, Zevran pushed Alim against the wall. He undid the lower catch of Alim’s robes, and began rubbing him through his leggings.

“Ah!--going to make a mess of me, are you,” gasped Alim, squirming into the touch and trying to hook a leg around Zevran’s waist.

“Where is the fun, if there is no mess? Maybe I should make you make a mess, and make you walk around like that all day, in your mess.”

Alim could only whimper. It was filthy, absolutely filthy; just the thought of going to all those meetings with Arl Eamon and Anora and the Banns in cum-soaked smallclothes, feeling the obscene dampness on him every moment and trying not to squirm--oh, Maker, would they smell it on him? Surely they would. They wouldn’t say anything, but they would know exactly how sick and depraved Alim Surana was. They’d still give him aid against the Blight, but the songs afterwards would say he had fucked the Archdemon to death.

He bucked forward harder, against Zevran’s cunning fingers, clutching his hands in the fabric of Zevran’s tunic. The clothing between them muted the sensation maddeningly; at the same time, the pressure and friction of tight cloth against his swollen erection was ecstasy. He tried to pull Zevran closer to him, and realized with a thrill of arousal that Zevran was thrusting his hips against the back of the hand he was rubbing Alim with. Zevran then curled his hand into a fist, using his knuckles on both of them for more pressure. Alim could do nothing other than thrust his clothed cock against the delicious sensation, until his balls drew up and he shuddered his release against Zevran’s hand.

Only half-sated, but spent, he slumped down against the wall. Zevran caught him, and helped him to his knees.

Zevran lifted his tunic, revealing the hardness in his leggings and already a small wet spot on them. Alim shivered, knowing there must be a much larger spot on himself. He watched hungrily as Zevran got himself out. The head of his cock flushed purple with arousal, and another bead of precum was already dripping out to replace what had been smeared inside his smallclothes.

“Close your eyes and open your mouth,” ground out Zevran, almost too close to the brink to speak. Seconds later, Alim felt hot liquid striping his face, and tasted the pungent drops that landed in his mouth.

He opened his eyes. Zevran began rubbing his cum into Alim’s face, chuckling as Alim whined at the filthiness of it.

“We should finish this in our own room, no?”

Alim thought of walking back across the entire mansion in this state, with cum smeared on his face and sticky, wet cum in his smalls, passing servants, his companions, even the Arl himself, and the thought alone was enough to make him moan as an aftershock ripped through him.

A few hours later, after they had fucked again, bathed, and changed (walking around with dried cum in your smalls is considerably hotter in theory than in actuality), Zevran asked, “So, are you going to wear the earring?”

“Maybe. I’d have to pierce my ear. I’m a bit scared to; in the Circle, that’s as good as admitting you’re a blood mage. At least, if you’re an elf, anyway.”

“But you are a warden now. The Divine herself could not make you do anything.”

“True, I suppose. But you’re going to have to help me; I can’t see my own ear.”

“Which ear, right or left?”

“Right. Can you get the elfroot spirits and a cloth scrap out of my medical kit, and find a large pin or needle? I’ll be over here applying an ice spell to my ear.”

Zevran retrieved the items and handed them to Alim; Alim opened the elfroot spirits, poured a bit on the cloth, and began wiping down his ear.

“You do the same to your hands, the pin, and the earring,” he instructed.

Zevran did. “Ready?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Zevran drove the needle through, then pulled it out and replaced it with the earring. He bent the wire closed, and then Alim reached up, cupping his ear with green light.

“That is so not fair. Do you have any idea how much bother healing piercings are for anyone else?”

“Oh yes, I’ll just risk bleeding my tainted Warden blood on all the nobles of Ferelden. Actually, I don’t think it’s possible to catch the Blight from my blood, at least not yet, but you might want to wash your hands and use the elfroot spirits again.”

Zevran just laughed, and poked the earring. “This shall forever be a symbol of our probable love, and how much of an ass you are.”

“Yes, yes. Go wash your hands.”

**Author's Note:**

> "Alistair's sadly unavailable ass" has been a running joke between these two, since before they started fucking. Why is he straight? We just don't know.
> 
> Also, with regards to literally one line in that sex scene, what the shitting fuck are Origins mage robes? How does anybody wear them? How do they put them on? The basic Circle Mage robes look like they're linen or wool (probably depends on the season) and just go over the head, at least for the men's version, but the Tevinter and Chasind robe templates, and the kind Irving and Zathrian wear (and Avernus, the ones he wears and drops, which is what Alim is wearing in this)--there is just no way to put those on. There's this godawful stole, and a belt that doesn't do anything, and the weird leather shoulder cape, and then pretty much no extra opening at the neckline. And it's mostly older mages wearing those kind, so you'd think that it was supposed to be something easier to put on!
> 
> Anyway, it makes no goddamn sense, so I'm going to headcanon that it works like a cassock, and is really an outergarment, and mages generally wear loose linen shirts/shifts, leggings, smallclothes, and breastbands (if needed) underneath, plus socks and sandals or slippers--for Circle mages, both are designed to be pretty much impossible to run in and to make a godawful amount of noise if you try to walk anywhere. (Wooden soles on sandals or hard, smooth leather soles on slippers would do it.) The templars probably only hand out boots if you're doing labwork or gardening, and you have to give them back after. The only clothing anyone gets to own are their shoes unless they can afford to buy stuff from the commissary (and even that has to fit a dress code, and you have to wash it yourself with no equipment); you have a sign on your bed saying what sizes you are, and every time it's your section's laundry day the Tranquil take all your clothes and bring you back fresh ones in those sizes. If you left anything in the pockets, you're not getting it back. Sometimes, they mess up your clothing order and you're SOL for a week. No one's clothes ever fit. There are only two or three hem lengths for each torso size and the shortest robes all have buttons and loops on the insides so even shorter mages don't have their hems drag on the floor.
> 
> The system is efficient, and thoroughly demoralizing. At least half a dozen mages in recent memory have turned to demon summoning just because they wanted some Maker-damned trousers that fit.


End file.
